Los Angeles City Council Wants $1 Billion for the Homeless

Two Los Angeles City Council members are pushing for a November ballot measure that, if voted in, would authorize a bond of at least $1 billion that would go towards housing for the city’s 47,000-person (and growing) homeless population.

“Voters are prepared to make an investment,” Councilman Marqueece Harris-Dawson told the Los Angeles Times. “What’s different now than what I think it’s been in the past is that there’s no part of the city that doesn’t experience homelessness,” he added.

Harris-Dawson and Jose Huizar, the chairman and vice-chairman of L.A. City Council’s homelessness and poverty committee, reportedly announced their plan, and used a recent poll to support their push for the ballot measure.

The Times notes that Huizar’s district includes Skid Row and has Los Angeles’s highest concentration of homeless individuals.

A new poll that was reportedly provided to Harris-Dawson and Huizar last week found that 68 percent of individuals surveyed would “probably” or “definitely” vote in support of a bond that would help allay the onslaught of homelessness.

However, the Times notes that that same poll found that there was very low support for new taxes.

The homeless situation has become so bad throughout the Golden State that in Northern California several Bay Area news outlets are joining forces to sound the alarm on the epidemic using social media and writing pieces about the issue in a series that will be published on June 29.

The two prime areas of homelessness in Los Angeles are Skid Row, near downtown, and the beach communities of Venice and Santa Monica. There are proposals to address the problem of homeless veterans by using some of the Veterans Affairs facilities in Westwood to provide shelter.

Los Angeles County is also considering a local income tax that will go towards addressing the city’s homelessness crisis.